How JFK, the Marilyn Monroe of Politics, Won Over Eleanor Roosevelt

‘Reconciliable Differences: The Unlikely Political Alliance of John F. Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt’By Barbara A. PerryUniversity of Virginia Press, 320 pages‘Ladies’ Man: The Careless Heart of John F. Kennedy’By Laurence LeamerG.P. Putnam’s Sons, 320 pagesHow far can biography go in explaining politics? Here is a paragraph about Eleanor Roosevelt’s response to what Barbara A. Perry calls the aspiring playboy president, “young enough” to be ER’s son. She addressed him as “my dear boy” in a 1959 telegram. “The maternalism inherent in that salutation reflected not only the generational difference between the two Democrats but a deeper schism for Eleanor. As a young woman, she had been a shrinking violet, while her husband displayed all the attributes of a charming extrovert. ‘Adulation bothered Eleanor. It intoxicated her husband,’ biographer Joseph Lash observed of their personality differences, and she occasionally chastised Franklin for his impertinence. She particularly disliked FDR’s flirtatious nature—even before she discovered his extramarital affair with Lucy Mercer in 1918. During her lengthy engagement to Franklin, young Eleanor had fretted that she might lose her fiancé because he was so attractive.”You might almost say JFK was the Marilyn Monroe of presidential candidates, suspect because someone that good-looking could not also be that intelligent. The earnest Eleanor distrusted what appeared to her as glib romancing and politicking, the two going together all too well in her wry estimation of a presidential contender with overweening, impudent ambition. So what changed Eleanor Roosevelt’s mind about this upstart? Three of FDR’s sons supported Kennedy, yet ER did not come around to his side until after he soundly defeated Adlai Stevenson for the Democratic nomination and then proceeded to make canny moves like choosing his rival, Lyndon Johnson, as his running mate. Then Kennedy did something that was bound to please. He appealed directly to her, even though she bluntly told him he did not need her. In effect, JFK courted ER, and she was susceptible, an aspect of her personality Ms. Perry does not explore. ER was enthralled with the handsome Dr. David Gurewitsch, a charmer even as he was courting a a beautiful younger woman, journalist Martha Gellhorn. When ER began to advise JFK on how to speak in public, she was well on the way to becoming seduced by his charm as well as his willingness to entertain her policy positions. ER probably didn’t know the details of JFK’s romantic rendezvous that are copiously documented in Laurence Leamer’s chapter titles: “Don Juan,” “Slam, Bam, Thank You, Ma’am,” and “The Senate’s Gay Young Bachelor.” But Mrs. Roosevelt certainly knew enough by way of rumors about JFK’s love life to be concerned about just how reckless he was even after securing the Democratic nomination for president. Mr. Leamer recounts an episode about a “meddlesome” Georgetown couple, identified as “Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Kater,” bent on embarrassing Kennedy publicly, insinuating that he had an affair with their tenant, “the wildly attractive twenty-year-old Pamela Turnure.” The indefatigable Katers set up two tape recorders strategically placed in the kitchen and just below the upstairs bedroom that captured Kennedy’s “unmistakable Boston accent” and “grunting.” They were camera-ready when he left their home: “He shielded his face like an arrested felon,” Mr. Leamer remarks, “just as the flashbulb went off, but he now knew Turnure’s landlords were onto him.” According to Mr. Leamer, Kennedy sent a lawyer to intimidate the couple, yet they persisted. The biographer includes this tantalizing sentence about Mrs. Kater: “She wrote letters to prominent figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Truman.” Did ER read the letter? Mr. Leamer does not say. Who knows? Mrs. Kater never seems to have given up: “During the last few weeks of the presidential campaign, Mrs. Kater paraded with her photo in front of the White House. No one paid much attention. They were too busy shouting out that this ‘nutcase’ belonged in St. Elizabeths, the DC mental asylum.” By this time, a good portion of the press, not to mention Mrs. Roosevelt, were on board the Kennedy express. Mr. Rollyson deals with Mrs. Roosevelt and her involvement with David Gurewitsch in ‘Beautiful Exile: The Life of Martha Gellhorn.’ His writing about JFK is included in ‘Making the American Presidency: How Biographers Shape History’ to be published on Presidents’ Day 2027.

How JFK, the Marilyn Monroe of Politics, Won Over Eleanor Roosevelt

How JFK, the Marilyn Monroe of Politics, Won Over Eleanor Roosevelt

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